Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you have heard about Uber’s narcissistic and brash CEO Travis Kalanick who was fired by his board. In previous articles, I argued that humbitious leaders tend be more effective over time, and I showed the empirical evidence supporting the idea that humility can be a long-term competitive advantage for organizations.
“But what about all those narcissists like Kalanick that end up in leadership positions?” you may ask. “Aren’t they successful too?” In this article, I will share some of the evidence relating to narcissistic leaders’ performance.
Let’s start with some background on narcissism and Greek mythology. As the well-known myth goes, Narcissus was famous for his extraordinary beauty and astounding physique. He was loved by Gods and humans alike, but he rarely reciprocated that love. A young man named Aminias was especially tortured by his one-sided love for Narcissus. He prayed to the Gods to punish Narcissus for all the pain that he had caused him and then killed himself on Narcissus’ doorsteps. Shortly after, Narcissus found himself by the banks of a river. He stopped for a drink and saw his own reflection in the water. He was awestruck by his beauty and instantly fell in love with his own image. Unable to obtain the object of his desire, he was punished by the Gods and suffered a miserable death.
Building on this conception, narcissism has been defined by psychologists as a personality trait characterized by a sense of self-infatuation, personal grandiosity, and a desire for attention and confirmation. Due to their lack of empathy, narcissists engage in exploitative behaviors, often taking credit for someone else’s work and blaming mistakes on others. When confronted with negative feedback or criticism, they turn aggressive and hostile.
The overlap between narcissistic behaviors and some leaders’ behaviors is obvious. Most of the well-regarded CEOs have narcissistic traits: Steve Jobs of Apple, Jack Welch of General Electric, Elon Musk of Tesla and Space X, and Larry Ellison of Oracle, to name a few. Are narcissistic leaders more successful than humble ones?
When studying the relationship between narcissism and leadership, researchers typically distinguish between two phenomena: leadership emergence, i.e., whether someone gets a leadership position or is selected for it, and leadership effectiveness, i.e., once in a leadership position, how effective is that individual in the role. Let’s look first at whether narcissists tend to be chosen for leadership positions. In order to be selected into such position, one has to be noticed and remembered. Managers tend to select those who promote themselves and that draw attention to their positive qualities and past accomplishments. Job candidates who engage in more self-promotion tend to receive better evaluations from interviewers and tend to be selected more for hiring. Narcissists are typically very confident, which presents a huge advantage for their emergence as leaders.
Research in experimental settings shows that overconfident individuals achieve higher status, respect and influence in groups, even after teammates have been shown evidence of those overconfident individuals’ actual poor performance. In fact, many of the narcissist’s natural characteristics such as social dominance and extraversion are viewed by others as “leader-like” traits.
When individuals who do not know each other are assigned to work in groups with no formal leader designation, narcissists invariably emerge as leaders regardless of their individual performance. For example, in a study of managers participating in a leaderless group discussion exercise, narcissists were singled out as leaders by their teammates as well as by a group of independent experts who had received extensive leadership-rater training. However, and this is very important, once team members interact over a longer period of time and become more familiar with the actions of the narcissistic leaders, they do not perceive them as effective leaders anymore.
This phenomenon is often referred to in the management literature as the chocolate cake model. “Relationships with narcissistic leaders can be a paradoxical experience, much like eating chocolate cake,” write ChinWei Ong and her colleagues in a recent article. ”The first bite of chocolate cake is usually rich in flavor and texture, and extremely gratifying. After a while, however, the richness of this flavor makes one feel increasingly nauseous. Being led by a narcissist could be a similar experience: Narcissists might initially be perceived as effective leaders, but these positive perceptions may decrease over time”. Narcissistic individuals are initially described by others as “confident, entertaining, and physically attractive,” but towards the end they are referred to as “hostile, arrogant, and cold.”
Putting it All Together
Narcissistic individuals are self-promoting and confident, and tend to be selected more for leadership positions. However, once in their positions, their followers realize that they are not effective leaders over time. Just like the first bite of chocolate cake, they are great initially but tend to cause nausea when you have too much. Kalanick’s team had enough of his chocolate cake!
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Dr. Amer Kaissi is a Professional Speaker, Executive Coach and an expert on Leadership, Humility & Ambition, Assuming Positive Intent, Psychological Safety & Accountability, Growth Mindsets & Resilience.
